One of the remarkable aspects of the Great Famine was the
amount
of private relief collected on behalf of the Irish poor,
especially following the second crop failure in 1846. Although
this money is difficult to quantify, at least £2,000,000 was
raised. A small part of the money was sent to the Scottish poor
because the potato crop had also failed in the Highlands of
Scotland. During earlier food shortages, in 1822 and 1831,
charitable bodies had been set up to provide relief at a local
level. Remarkably, the relief given after 1846 was international:
donations came from all over the world, even from people who had
no connection with Ireland. It cut across religious, national,
and economic differences. Help came from groups who were
themselves poor, including former slaves in the Caribbean and
native Americans in the United States. Heads of states were also
involved—for example, Queen Victoria, the Sultan of the
Ottoman
Empire, and the President of the United States.

There was extensive fund raising in Ireland from all sections
of society. Resident landlords were generally involved, although
many absentees were criticised for their indifference. Even
children were fund raising; for example, pupils in a school in
Armagh City started a subscription for the local poor in 1847.
Most private donations and charitable bodies came to an end at
the harvest of 1847, partly because donations had started to dry
up, but also because people believed the Famine was over. Though
private charity was short-lived, it played a vital role in saving
lives.

When the potato blight came back private relief committees
were
formed in Ireland and Britain. While this was a customary
response to distress, the scale of fund raising by the committees
formed after 1846 was unusual. The most important ones were the
British Relief Association, the General Central Relief Committee,
the Irish Relief Association and the Mansion House Committee.
Some committees that had helped in the food shortages of 1822 and
1831 were revived.

One of the most successful of the private relief bodies was
the British Association for the Relief of Distress in Ireland and
the Highlands of Scotland (the British Relief Association). It
was formed in London on 1 January 1847 by Lionel de Rothschild, a
Jewish banker and philanthropist. Of the money that the
Association raised, five-sixths went to Ireland and one-sixth to
Scotland. A Polish count, Paul de Strzelecki, was appointed to
oversee the distribution of money in Ireland. He refused to take
any pay for his services, but he was knighted because the
important work he did. One of his most successful schemes was the
feeding of children in schools in the west of Ireland. The scheme
came to an end in 1848 when the funds of the British Relief
Association ran out.

Some private relief organisations were also set up in Ireland,
particularly in Belfast and Dublin. One of the largest was the General
Central Relief Committee, formed in Dublin on 29 December 1846. By the
end of 1847, it had given 1,871 grants, ranging from £10 to
£400 and it had distributed £61,767 in all. It included
many prominent and influential people. Two of its trustees were the
Marquis of Kildare and Lord Cloncurry. It included the Catholic
Archbishop of Dublin, Daniel Murray; the Marquis of Abercorn, the Dean
of St Patrick’s, the Earl of Erne, Daniel O’Connell MP,
and William Smith O’Brien MP. Charitable organisations were
formed in Belfast, for example, the Belfast General Relief Fund
founded by leading members of the local Church of Ireland and
Presbyterian clergy.

In folk memory, Irish landlords have generally been condemned for
their callous attitude towards their poor tenants. However, the
response of landlords was very varied. While some used the distress to
evict their tenants, others gave relief in different ways. When the
blight came a second time some landlords lowered their rents by
10%. These actions tended to be short-term, especially because
landlords themselves had financial problems when taxes rose steeply
and income from rents fell.

Most of the charitable efforts of Irish landlords were
concentrated on the early months of 1847. The Marquis of Sligo, a
liberal landlord, was chairman of a committee that set up a private
soup kitchen in Westport in January 1847. He made an opening donation
of £100 and promised a subscription of £5 a week. Other
local gentry and Church of Ireland clergy contributed, and the opening
donation rose to £255. In Co. Down, Lord Roden, a landlord well
known for his evangelical views and his involvement in the Orange
Order, opened a soup shop on his estate where a soup, made of rice and
meal porridge, was sold at a penny a quart and potato cake was sold at
12oz. a penny. Some landlords, such as the Earl of Shannon, also
resold soup at less than cost. In Skibbereen, which had been infamous
for the sufferings of the people, the Church of Ireland minister, the
Rev. Caulfield, was giving 1149 people one free pint of soup each
day. In Belfast, a privately funded relief committee in Ballymacarrett
gave soup to over 12,000 people daily, about 60% of the local
population. On some estates rent was reduced or employment
provided. Daniel O’Connell, who owned estates in Co. Kerry,
gave his tenants a 50% reduction in rent. Lord and Lady Waterford
financed a soup kitchen on their estate, and Maria Edgeworth in
Edgworthstown provided free seed to her tenants. The Earl of Devon
sent £2,000 and the Duke of Devonshire £100 to help the
tenants on their Irish estates. But not all landlords were
generous. The absentee landlord, James Robinson donated £1 to
the Waterford Union for its soup kitchen. Lord Londonderry, one of the
ten richest men in the United Kingdom, who owned land in counties
Down, Derry, Donegal and Antrim, in addition to property in Britain,
was criticised for his meanness: he and his wife gave £30 to the
local relief committee, but spent £150,000 renovating their
house.

Within Ireland some groups and individuals were very actively
involved in fund raising. The Irish Art Union organised an exhibition
of Old Masters and the proceeds were given to various relief
organisations. The Irish Benchers gave £1,000 to the General
Relief Fund and the Irish Coast Guards raised £429. The brewer
Arthur Guinness made two separate donations of £60 and
£100.

4. The Society of Friends (Quakers) and relief

The Famine attracted assistance from a wide variety of religions,
ranging from Hindus in India to Jews and Baptists in New York. The
main Protestant churches in Ireland (Church of Ireland and
Presbyterian) were actively involved in collecting and distributing
relief. The Society of Friends (Quakers) distinguished themselves in
charitable work and are warmly remembered for their famine relief.

By the mid-nineteenth century, the Quakers had become a
predominantly middle- and upper middle-class body, prominent in
textiles, shipping, railways, and retailing. The efforts of Irish and
English Quakers such as Jonathan Pim and James Hack Tuke to organise
relief works were widely praised. Jonathan Pim (1806–85), was
the owner, with his brother William Harvey Pim, of the Dublin firm of
Pim Brothers, drapers and textile manufacturers. He was Liberal MP for
Dublin 1865–74, the first Irish Quaker to sit in
Parliament. James Hack Tuke (1819–96), was a banker and was very
active in the distribution of relief in Ireland in 1847 and again in
1880. On both occasions he published widely-read and influential
accounts of what he had seen. His experiences in 1847 are recorded
in A Visit to Connaught in 1847, where he wrote: ‘The
culminating point of man’s physical degradation seems to have
been reached in Erris …’. He was accompanied on his
relief mission by his fellow Quaker W. E. Forster (later Chief
Secretary for Ireland, 1880–82).

The Quakers were motivated by simple Christian charity and their
interventions saved many lives. Like many others, they became involved
when the blight returned. In November 1846, at the suggestion of
Joseph Bewley, the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends
was established in Dublin. Joseph Bewley and the Bewley family were
tea and coffee merchants who went on to found their well-known
Oriental cafes in Dublin and elsewhere. During the Famine, Bewley was
joint secretary with Jonathan Pim, of the Central Relief Committee. In
the following month, a sister committee was set up in London. Both
committees worked closely with their co-religionists in the United
States. Though the Quakers in Ireland were small in number—there
were only about 3,000—they played a most important role in
providing relief, particularly through soup kitchens. When the
government decided to use soup kitchens as the main form of relief in
the spring of 1847, the Quakers provided the boilers to make the
soup.

The Quakers were particularly effective in informing newspapers in
Dublin and Britain of the true situation in the west of Ireland,
emphasising the extent of suffering. At the beginning of 1847, the
Committee warned that unless more food was made available millions of
lives would be lost and it stated that ‘those who are guilty of
neglect in these particulars will be responsible before man, and we
venture to add, before an all-just Providence.’

The Quakers were also successful in raising money outside Ireland,
especially in Britain and the United States. Unlike many other
charitable bodies, their involvement did not end in 1847. Their
donations amounted to over £83,000. Almost 2000 individual
grants ranging from £10 to £400, were distributed through
Protestant and Catholic clergymen. The largest grants, over
£20,000, were made in Connacht, although over £11,000 was
donated to Ulster, principally Cavan and Donegal. At the end of 1847,
as donations dried up, the committee wound down its activities. It did
not accept (as the Government said) that the Famine was over but it
felt that charity towards Ireland had dried up.

In 1848, however, the Quakers decided that instead of providing
direct relief to the poor, they would concentrate on providing
longer-term assistance, such as fishing tackle, seeds, and farm
implements. In response to the deepening distress after the harvest
failure in 1848, the committee reconvened in May 1849. It raised and
distributed over £4,000 within two months. Money was allocated
only to clergymen in the south and west. This reflects the
geographical shift in the need for relief. In July 1849 they appealed
in newspapers, including the Times, for financial support to
enable them to respond to the 200 outstanding applications.

Quakers themselves were personally involved in distributing
famine relief, and this took a high toll. At least fifteen
Quakers died as a result of famine related diseases. Jonathan Pim
collapsed from overwork, and the premature deaths of Joseph
Bewley, Jacob Harvey and William Todhunter were blamed on
exhaustion. In a period of a year the Quakers had distributed
approximately £200,000. Their work was particularly important
because it was direct, was based in the communities where it was
required, and had no ideological or religious agenda.

The churches played an important part in the distribution of
government and private relief. Local priests and ministers were widely
praised for their role in helping the poor. Some churches also
established their own relief committees to raise funds. The two
Catholic bishops who were particularly involved were Archbishop Murray
of Dublin and Archbishop MacHale of Tuam. Catholic aid continued
beyond 1847, when many other forms of private relief had dried up. The
amount collected is hard to quantify but it was probably more than
£400,000. Most of this was distributed by local priests in the
distressed areas. This avoided much of the expense and delay that
marked Government relief.

Because of its overseas network, the Irish Catholic church
was
able to attract money. Some of the largest amounts were raised by
the Catholic parishes in Britain and the United States. The
Tablet, the leading English Catholic newspaper, offered to act
as a channel for English Catholics to send money to Ireland. By March
1847 Bishop Fitzpatrick in Boston had raised almost $20,000, mostly
from local Catholics, though it was meant for distribution to all
creeds in Ireland. Apart from donations from outside Ireland, priests
in Ireland donated money for the famine poor. James Maher, the rector
of the Irish College in Rome, sold his horse and gig for this
purpose. The staff and students of Maynooth college made a donation of
over £200.

A committee for the Irish poor was established in Rome on 13
January 1847. Pope Pius IX donated 1000 Roman crowns from his own
pocket. In addition to personal financial assistance, he also offered
spiritual and practical support. In March 1847, he took the
unprecedented step of issuing a papal encyclical to the international
Catholic com-munity, appealing for support for the victims of the
Famine. As a result, large sums of money were raised by Catholic
congregations: the Vincent de Paul Society in France raised
£5,000; the diocese of Strasbourg collected 23,365 francs; two
priests in Caracas in Venezuela contributed £177; Father Fahy in
Argentina sent over £600; a priest in Grahamstown in South
Africa sent £70; and the Catholic community in Sydney in New
South Wales sent £1,500. Despite the unprecedented intervention
by Pope Pius IX, the Irish bishops failed to thank him for his
donation or for the encyclical letter until forced to do so by Dr Paul
Cullen. Cardinal Fransoni, an adviser to the Pope, was also angry
because of the laziness of the Irish bishops in fund raising for the
poor, though he had given them official permission to do whatever was
needed to be done. The thanklessness of the Irish bishops and their
wrangling with one another lost them further vital support in
Rome. The Pope’s concern and support for Ireland came to an
abrupt end in 1848 when the revolutionary struggle in Italy forced him
to flee Rome. Nevertheless, his brief interest had a major effect in
urging the international Catholic community to support relief in
Ireland. But things could be difficult. As the letter from the Bishop
of Augsburg demonstrates, transferring money to Ireland could be
complicated.

Women were particularly involved in the collection and distribution
of private relief. They were encouraged by the early action of Queen
Victoria who donated £2,000 to the British Relief Association in
January 1847. This made her the largest single donor to famine
relief. More important, Victoria published two ‘Queen’s
Letters’, the first in March 1847 and the second in October
1847, asking people in Britain to donate money to relieve Irish
distress. The first was printed in the main newspapers and read out in
Anglican churches. Following its publication, a proclamation announced
that 24 March 1847 had been chosen as a day for a ‘General Fast
and Humiliation before Almighty God’, and the proceeds were to
be distributed to Ireland and Scotland. The Queen’s first letter
raised £170,571 but the second raised only £30,167. In
fact, the second letter was widely condemned in Britain, and this
indicates a hardening in public attitudes towards the giving of
private relief to Ireland.

Following the second appearance of the blight, ladies’
associations were formed in Ireland and England, such as the
Ladies’ Relief Association in Dublin and the Belfast
Ladies’ Association. The Society of Friends also established
separate ladies’ committees. Asenath Nicholson, an American
evangelist who visited Ireland during the Famine, praised the Belfast
women for their hard work and she contrasted their efforts with the
laziness of the ladies of Dublin.

One of the most successful of the women’s groups was the
Belfast Ladies’ Association. It held its first meeting on 1
January 1847 at the Commercial Buildings in Belfast. It was described
as being attended by ‘a large and influential assemblage of
Ladies, of all religious denominations’. One of the oldest
members was a Miss McCracken, whose brother, Henry Joy McCracken, had
been executed as a rebel in 1798. At the first meeting, resolutions
were passed and three treasurers, three secretaries, and five
sub-committees were appointed. The sub-committees were a Corresponding
Committee (to contact the distressed districts), a Collecting
Committee (to appeal for subscriptions and donations), an Industrial
Committee (to provide employment), the Clothing Committee (to supply
clothing and blankets), the Bazaar Committee (to hold a sale of
ladies’ work at Easter). Initially the Association was formed
for the relief of distressed districts in the west of the country but
increasingly during 1847 it became clear that there was famine
elsewhere, even in industrial towns such as Belfast. The Association
was organised under the direction of the Rev. John Edgar, a noted
temperance advocate and Professor of Divinity in the Royal College of
Belfast. The Society attempted to counteract the effects of the famine
in the west of Ireland by trying to ‘improve, by industry, the
temporal condition of the poor of the females of Connaught and their
spiritual [condition] by the truth of the Bible’. By 1849 it had
collected £15,000 which was used to establish industrial schools
in ‘wild Connaught’, where skills such as knitting and
needle-work could be taught. By 1850 the Association had employed
thirty-two schoolmistresses within the province who worked under the
direction of the resident ladies. In the same year, the Association
claimed to have offered employment and education to over 2,000 poor
girls and women. Its members tried to change the habits and morality
of the poor in general by influencing the behaviour of women.

The tragedy of the famine spurred many women into action. An
extraordinary range of activity was carried on by women of all
denominations. Food kitchens were set up. Committees of women
organised the distribution of relief and collected money. Nuns nursed
in fever hospitals and fed the starving at their convents. Women
philanthropists tried practical solutions to poverty by creating
employment for the female poor in cottage industries. Generally, this
type of philanthropy was not carried on by charitable societies but
depended on the enthusiasm of individual women. The teaching of
needlework became an integral part of the education given by nuns to
poor children and many laywomen acted as teachers and benefactors in
schools where needlework was taught. By 1851 902 children had got
these skills in schools. This kind of education was particularly
prevalent in Cork. For example, Mrs Meredith opened the Adelaide
school in the city, which employed ‘young persons of limited
means or reduced circumstances’. Similar work was carried out by
the Ladies’ Industrial Society of Ireland, founded at the height
of the Famine in 1847 to ‘carry out a system for encouraging and
developing the latent capacities of the poor of Ireland’.

Other smaller ladies committees were formed, modelled on the
Belfast Society, such as the Newry Benevolent Female Working Society,
which provided employment for women in spinning, knitting and
needlework.

The United States, which had strong connections with Ireland,
provided very significant private relief to Ireland—in excess of
$2,000,000. A large part was in cash, food, clothing, and
blankets. One of the first relief committees was established in Boston
at the end of 1845, although most of the relief efforts came after the
second failure of the potato crop. The Boston committee, which
included many members of the local Repeal Association, blamed the
Famine in Ireland on British misrule. In 1847, members of the American
Government, including the Vice-President, George Dallas, were involved
in giving assistance to Ireland. Jacob Harvey, who co-ordinated relief
donations in New York, estimated that in January and February 1846,
Irish labourers and servants had sent $326,410 to Ireland in small
bank drafts. By January 1847 the payments totalled over a million
dollars. There was a more widespread response to the second failure of
the potato crop, helped by the fact that the United States had enjoyed
a bumper harvest. An attempt was even made by the American Senate to
provide $500,000 to Irish relief, though it ultimately failed. The
President, James Polk, made a $50 donation: a Boston newspaper
declared scornfully that it was too small and had to be
‘squeezed’ out of him. One action of the relief committees
in Boston that got great publicity was the sending of two ships
(the Jamestown and the Macedonian)full of supplies to Cork. The Jamestown completed the
journey to Cóbh in record time. A portion of the food on
the Macedonian was distributed in Scotland. Both ships were
manned by volunteers. The fact that the United States was in the
middle of a war with Mexico made the Government’s grant of
permission more noteworthy. In reply to criticisms of the Government
for permitting a warship to be used for the benefit of another
country, Captain Forbes of the Jamestown, declared: ‘it
is not an everday matter to see a nation starving’. A Boston
newspaper described the mission of the
Jamestown as ‘one of the most sublime transactions in the
nation’s history’. Some Cork newspapers used the arrival
of the Jamestown to contrast the generosity of the people of
the United States with the meanness of the British government. In
total, over 100 vessels carrying 20,000 tons foodstuffs, came from the
United States to Ireland in the wake of the Jamestown.
Although many high-ranking officials become involved in relief,
donations came, too, from people who were themselves poor and
disadvantaged, such as the Choctaw Indians in the United States.
Their contribution of $170 was made through the American Society of
Friends.

The response of people overseas, particularly those of Irish
descent and but also of people who had no ties with Ireland, was
an important part of private relief. The first donation was
raised in India at the end of 1845, on the initiative of British
troops serving in Calcutta. It was followed by the formation of
the Indian Relief Fund in January 1846 that appealed to British
people living in India to start similar collections. They raised
almost £14,000. The Freemasons of India contributed
£5,000. A
contribution of £3,000 was raised in Bombay in one week. The
Government of Barbados gave a donation, partly inspired by a
donation given by Ireland to them some years earlier. In
1847–48,
committees in Australia raised over £10,000. Money was set
aside
to assist emigration from Ireland to Australia, but was
eventually returned to the donors because the committee could not
agree about the kind of emigrants to help, whether paupers or
able-bodied emigrants. Other donations came from South Africa
(£550); St Petersburg, Russia (£2,644);
Constantinople (£620);
the islands of Seychelles and Rodrigues (£111 and
£16); and
Mexico (£652). This shows that the Famine had become an event
of
international significance.

Private charities provided essential relief but the activities
of a few were controversial. This is because some private relief
was associated with proselytism, that is, missions to convert
poor Catholics to Protestantism. Those who changed their religion
in return for relief were given disparaging names:
‘soupers’,
‘jumpers’, or ‘perverts’. A few
charitable bodies read bibles to
the poor to whom they gave food. In the genuine belief that they
were saving souls, a small number of Protestant evangelicals used
the hunger of the Catholics as an means to convert them. In the
west of Ireland, famine missionaries, such as the evangelicals
Rev. Hyacinth Talbot D’Arcy and Rev. Edward Nangle, tried to
win
converts in this way . Some evangelicals believed, no doubt
sincerely, that the British Government had caused the Famine by
giving a grant to Catholic education, to Maynooth College in
1845: ‘It is done, and in that very year, that very month,
the
land is smitten, the earth is blighted, famine begins, and is
followed by plague, pestilence and blood.’ On the total
failure
of the potato crop in 1846 there was a quick rise in demand for
the services of these missions and by the spring of 1847 they
were employing over 2000 labourers and feeding 600 schoolchildren
each day. By 1848, the number of schoolchildren attending the
mission schools had increased to over 2000, and 3000 adults were
employed carrying out relief works, out of a total population of
7,000.

Another well-known missionary who worked in the west of
Ireland was Michael Brannigan, a convert from Catholicism to the
Presbyterianism and a fluent speaker of Irish. In 1847 he
established 12 schools in counties Mayo and Sligo, and by the end
of 1848 they had grown to 28, despite ‘priestly
opposition.’
Attendance soon dropped when the British Relief Association began
providing each child with a half-pound of meal every day, but
this ended on 15 August 1848 when funds ran out.

The worries of the Catholic church are well put in a letter
from Fr William Flannelly of Ballinakill, Co. Galway, to Daniel
Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, 6 April 1849: ‘It cannot be
wondered if a starving people would be perverted in shoals,
especially as they [the missionaries] go from cabin to cabin, and
when they find the inmates naked and starved to death, they
proffer food, money and rainment, on the express condition of
becoming members of their conventicles.’ The Freeman’s
Journal
condemned this as ‘nefarious unchristian
wickedness.’ The Pope
felt worried enough to urge the Catholic hierarchy to oppose the
work of missionaries and, on one occasion, he reprimanded the
bishops for not doing enough to protect their flocks.

By 1851 the main missions claimed that they had won 35,000
converts and they were anxious to win more. Shortly afterwards,
100 additional preachers were sent to Ireland by the Protestant
Alliance. Well-provisioned missionary settlements in such
destitute areas as Dingle and Achill Island attracted many
converts. The missions were generally opposed by the Church of
Ireland. The impact of the missions was, in the end, slight and
tended to be localised. Some charitable organisations (including
orders of nuns) believed that the distress gave them an
opportunity to teach the Irish peasantry ‘good’
habits of hard
work. The missions, and even more so the illiberal reaction of
the Catholic clergy, tended to encourage sectarianism. Besides,
many converts had to go elsewhere because of hostility and
contempt in their own communities.

There were further crises in Ireland from time to time, and
famine threatened again in 1860–62 and 1879–80.
Again,
international private relief was essential and saved many lives.

However, private relief to Ireland was viewed by some
nationalists as another consequence of British injustice. When
Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Home Rule movement,
visited the United States at the end of 1879 he asked that
donations be sent to Ireland. But he also accused England of
failing to assist Ireland during the Great Famine, and he
alleged, falsely, that Queen Victoria was the only sovereign in
Europe who gave nothing from her private purse.

There was one important long-term political consequence. The
descendants of those who fled to the United States from
famine-stricken Ireland kept alive in the Irish-American
community a deep feeling of bitterness towards the British
government and towards British rule in Ireland. As a result, they
were a fertile source of funding for all Irish nationalist
movements, parliamentary and military, in the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.